Scapegoat - Opening Sequence

Shoot 3 - Evaluation

This was our final shoot. To ensure that all actors were on time and able to attend, I called all actors on Monday, then again Friday night, and the following Saturday morning as we really needed to get this shooting done. To get Sophie to the shoot I had to pick her up at her house for 10, then, met Tim at the Pembury bus stop at 10 past 10. Tom then arrived at 20 past 10 which was a little late. I then received a call from Shaun saying that he couldn’t attend, so I asked him whether he could leave his jumper in his porch for me so that I could pick it up and use it, so my little brother could wear it and look like Shaun to the audience. After this I then heard from George that he could not come either. After this quite stressful turn of events we made our way down to the location, being the shack for the end scene.
When we got there we had to clear a good opening to get to the shack as in the first shot Tom had to lift his leg quite high to get there which kind of spoilt the mood I was going for.
In the shack the camera gave a snowy effect inside the shack, I overcame this by hanging my coat over a hole in the wall, stopping some of the light from coming into the shack, this seemed to solve it and made the shot inside the shack a lot clearer.
I then tried to get a shot of Sophie, Tim and ‘Shaun’ in the shack all in the same shot without panning, This was very hard as I had to do a lot of takes to frame the actors right, but still get a reasonable amount of each actor in the shot, I then settled on all three crouching in a corner.
After this I then filmed Sophie and ‘Shaun’ doing a variety of creepy looking actions. These included twitching, moving their hair with their hands slowly and looking up jerkily in synchronisation.
I then filmed Tim reading the book with a jerky head movement, and made him look creepier by getting him to open his eyes really wide giving him a more possessed look. I then panned down during this shot to show him reading a book with words associated with horror scratched on. Then I filmed him turning the pages of the book, to the last one saying ‘They’re here’ which I thought causes suspense and adds a little more to the enigma. I also added fake blood to give a scarier effect to the scene.
After this I decided to get a shot tracking into Tim’s face. I went from a low shot to over Tom’s shoulder then into Tim’s face, with him then quickly looking up into the camera for a shock value. I did a smooth, and a shaky shot of this both in steadicam. The shaky shot will look good with music building up behind it and the smooth shot can maybe sped up and look more fluid so I did a couple of takes of both style.
After I got the end scene done, we walked down to the graveyard to get Sophie’s ‘corpse’ scene done. To not mess with continuity too much I re-filmed Tom entering the graveyard and had a variety of shots of him walking through the graveyard, using tombstones in the foreground for the variety of the shots to give a good effect. I then filmed Tom walk past Sophie laying on the ground with two takes of Sophie in the lower left hand corner, and one of her in the upper left hand corner. This was to get either the tombstone in shot, or something in the foreground. This can then be chosen later in editing.
After that I got a montage of Sophie’s face in a variety of CU shots to then later be edited, and I had finished for the day.
From this last shoot I learnt that you can ‘cheat’ continuity if you have to and that using cheap methods to get shots you want can still leave you with quality footage.
We were very happy with this last shoot and are pleased with the footage we have collected.

Shoot 2 - Evaluation

This shoot turned out to be a very disappointing one. This was due to one of the actors we needed not being able to turn up, and only being told at the last minute. This meant that we had to do another shoot after this one.
Since we couldn’t do the end scene without Tim there we decided to re-do some of the footage that didn’t look as good as we had hoped in the editing. We also decided that instead of having a montage of the corpses when they were alive, we decided to have a montage of the dead body. For this we had to amend our storyboard.
The first shot we did was in the opening scene, We shot a montage of a CU of Shaun’s face, then filmed Tom sitting up from the log, as in editing it wasn’t clear he was getting up from the first shoot. We didn’t have any problems with this, as since only a portion of Shaun is shown form the first shoot, we got him in relatively the same position and he was wearing the same clothing so we didn’t have a problem with the continuity. This was the same with Tom.
When filming Tom getting up off the log, we filmed a variety of different angles, but when looking back on the shots we found a branch was in the foreground of the shot. This gave the shot a great effect.
After this we decided to at least film Tom entering the barn for the last scene. We filmed him going into the barn for a few takes, and found they didn’t really look as good as we had liked. This was mainly due to the cars being in the way, which spoilt the shot. We fixed this by bringing the camera closer and putting the cars out of shot. This made the shot look a lot better, but still not good enough. From this we then decided to use a different location that we had seen before and thought of it as a second option. From this we had to amend our storyboard.
We also found that our ending won’t fit as well in the new location, so, to overcome this we decided on a new ending where the corpses will be shown at the end of the film, in the shack ‘alive’ again to get the audience thinking and make our opening more enigmatic.
From this shoot, we learnt to organise our actors better and putting things in the foreground makes the shot look so much better than without. We weren’t as happy with this shoot as we only got a small amount done. However we were a lot happier with our new ending and location and now knew exactly what we had to have done.

Shoot 1 - Evaluation

On our first shoot everyone arrived on time and we arrived at out first shooting location a little later.
Our first shot would include Shaun and Tom going from an ECU to a LS. This presented a few problems, first one being I had to walk backwards, so I couldn’t see where I was walking. We overcame this by having someone lead me while I kept the camera in position. Another problem was there was a lot of debris on the ground, We solved this by clearing the area of things big enough to trip over. Lastly, we found that we had to move the actors to lots of different locations to get the shot we wanted. After about 7 different takes I found the kind of shot I wanted to use. I chose this shot as it had very good framing for both actors shown, and was relatively easier to walk backwards down that line.
Another shot we had problems with were the scene with Tim sitting in the river. This was a difficult shot to do as we had to get Tom in the shot and framed to be in the upper right corner, to then pan downwards and left to get Tim framed in the lower right hand corner, This was hardest because we weren’t sure whether to use steadicam or use the tripod for this shot. We decided to do both, and found that the tripod being used made the shot look smoother, and so we used that.
After this we suggested that if Tim lay in the river that this would give a very disturbing look and so tried that. We tried this shot with both shirt on and off. We only did two takes of this as the river was very cold. A problem with this was that the shot with the shirt on gave his shirt an air bubble and didn’t look as good, so we had to use the shot with his shirt off, for this we had to amend the storyboard to include another body on the same stretch of river, occurring after the image of Tim lying against the bridge.
After we were finished in the woods we went to the graveyard to get Sophie’s corpse scene. First we filmed Tom entering the graveyard through a gate this presented a few problems as it was very hard to frame him correctly and still get the gravestones in. We decided to overcome this problem by shooting it again in another shoot.
When we finally got to Sophie’s scene we discovered that we had no battery left, this left us with no options but to do another shoot at a later date.
From this shoot we learnt the effectiveness of the leading lines and how to frame a shot correctly. If done again I would have tried to keep the walking back shot steadier and would have taken more batteries. However we got the majority of our filming done and were on schedule to get our opening sequence done by the deadline.

CF feedback background research

Excellent work. You have met all deadlines and this blog demonstrates that your research is clearly informing your creative process and that you are using ICT to collaborate as a group. I am particularly impressed by the discussions you are having on costume and lighting and how your reccie has informed and improved your concept. The pitch was excellent - well planned, informed by research into target audience, possible locations and generic conventions through film analysis. Your treatment was very convincing. Your storyboarding, scripting and location reccies show that you are carefully planning your work in advance of shooting.

Your planning mark currently stands at a level 4 - well done.
To achieve this overall, ensure that your time management and shoots are well organized and that all deadlines are met.

I’m looking forward to the gore and the scare!

Mrs Fernandez

Group Discussion - Props and Lighting

 

 This week George and I have been discussing props we may need to use during our filming of our opening sequence. We have decided we may have to incorporate a sign reading ‘Sorrow Falls’. This should make the audience identify the location as being called Sorrow Falls, which gives many horror connotations and is a conventional location name for horror films. This also has connotations of a small rural village or town. We may also need to set up a tent to illustrate that these people have been camping in this location. This will mean setting up a campsite which should be easy and inexpensive to do as we both have tents we could use for this. We can also lay empty drinks cans and bags next to the tent to connote that they have been there for a while.

 George and I also discussed the problem of having to film a dark sequence as most of our opening sequence is. We have sorted out this issue by us either filming on an overcast day, then touching it up a little with the editing software on the computer to darken the picture. Or by shooting our footage at the evening, or early in the morning. We may be also able to get the effect we want by shooting in daylight, then putting a blue filter on in the editing software. This will contrast well with the yellow filter we plan to use when cutting to out montage shots. This is the most likely option we are going to do.

 We have also been discussing how we are going to do the lighting in the barn scene where an orange light is seen coming out of the barn opening. So far we have been thinking of using large torches for this and using an orange filter over them to give the orange effect. We were going to be using some bigger lighting equipment from the media department, but after visiting the barn again we found there are no wall sockets to plug the lights into. I then found a man who may let us use his studio lighting as he has his own portable generator so the lack of wall sockets wouldn’t be a problem. However, we are unsure as to whether we will be able to use them when we begin shooting. So for now we plan to use some high power torches with orange film over them. This should be inexpensive, but still provide the effect we are looking for.

Group Discussion - Costumes

 Recently George and I have discussed the importance of costumes in our opening sequence. So far we have a pretty good idea of what we want from the costumes. We are going to have the actors wearing clothes that the audience should associate as being middle-classed teenager’s clothes. This mean we will be using hoodies, jeans and plain t-shirts. We think that the hoody idea for the costume is useful as it can be used to hide the faces of the extras so that only the people’s faces tat are visible will cut to montages of life previous to the incident. For this we are also going to be having so mud/dirt on the clothes. This will help to identify the characters as having a struggle in the wood, and when cutting to a montage the mud/dirt will not be on the clothes and will help show that there is a time change. 

 We have also been thinking about make-up and think will be using very little, but may use some blood effects e.g. blood capsules which we have found work well after experimenting with, and can purchase easily and cheaply at a known store. We also may put some dirt on the faces of the corpses to again illustrate a struggle, and may whiten their faces and darken their eyes to further connote that they are dead. These effects will also be useful for the time changes as they will be gone when cut to a montage.

 We have informed our confirmed actors and extras that we may be doing this and have no problem with the make-up or the costume ideas, and are eager to participate.